Search Jesus Caritas News & Archive

Site Guide

Charles de Foucauld, Silent witness for Jesus, 'in the face of Islam'

Reflecting on his experiences in Morocco, as the writing of
his book Reconnaissance au Maroc obliged him to do, and in the context
of renewed contact with the family of his discreet but deeply believing
cousins in Paris, Charles almost 'naturally' put to himself the
question of the 'truth' of that 'something greater' to which the
Muslims had alerted him and attracted him.

'I began to pray this
strange prayer, "My God, if You exist, make me know You."...'

While
reticent to the point of silence on the nature of his sudden conversion
in the confessional of the Abbe Huvelin, Charles will constantly
recommend this prayer to those of his family and friends who found
themselves in his position of doubt. For his prayer is answered, and he
discovers the reality of God, a reality so strong that

'immediately I
knew there was a God, I realized that I could live only for God'.14

The story is well known, but the key point, hidden by Charles' discretion,
is usually missed. Charles discovers the living God not in the silent
immensity and solitude of the desert, but in the living presence of the
man Jesus, who enlightens his doubts, heals his past and feeds him with
the living Bread of Life. For Charles' conversion occurs through his
participation in the sacraments of confession and communion, offered,
even pressed upon him, to his own surprise (he had only come to ask for
information!) and that by an old and sick minister of the Church, in a
dark and stuffy church building! His friend Henry de Castries, from a
similar starting point, the 'seduction' of Islam, never, it seems,
discovered this living 'presence' of Jesus, which became the bedrock
foundation of Charles' spirituality.

Did, we may ask, Charles compromise the absolute
'transcendence' of God that he had glimpsed in Islam, and which, as he
increasingly discovered, was the one foundation, the one uncompromising
and uncompromisable foundation, of Islam? On the contrary, Charles
feels called, we can say, to accentuate in his words and life, the
'All' of the 'One' God, that Absolute in face of whom the whole
creation is as 'nothing'. Nor does he diminish the real humanity of
Jesus; on the contrary he sees Jesus as primarily the 'workman of
Nazareth': the 'divine workman', yes, but one who is fully human, 'like
us', 'one of us'.15

Charles, therefore, is, as it were, 'caught'. He will never
deny the truth and grandeur of the basic Muslim affirmation, 'God is
great', and the corresponding natural obligation of all humans to
'adore'. On the contrary, he will declare that the Muslims fail to go
far enough:

'Islam has not enough contempt for creatures to be capable
of teaching a love of God worthy of God: without chastity and
poverty, love and adoration remain very imperfect'.16

But he is
internally obliged, by the inner logic of the faith of his conversion
experience, to affirm by his life that this transcendent God is the
'God-with-us', who is in person this man Jesus of Nazareth.